Many thanks as always to Ellen Brand, Waywren Truesong, Joisbishmyoga, Cherry, and Cloudy for cheer reading and beta work.

New Horizons (Part 2)

Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
~East Coker, V.21-23. T.S. Eliot.

His skull hit the ground, the pressure on his throat unyielding. Somehow he could still breathe but his body wouldn't move, limp under the weight on his legs and chest.

The spots in his vision cleared to reveal Kurou looming above—no, not Kurou. Kurou never wore white, never hid his identity behind glass and hat brim and projected panache. But Kid never had a smile that cruel, right? He should know, it was him doing the smiling!

Wasn't it?

"You made a good effort." Kid's gloved hand, the one not still wrapped around his throat, reached up to the monocle and pinched the skin below. It wasn't skin at all, it was latex ripping, Kid vanished into the ether like he'd never been, and instead it was Ka—Sha—VERMOUTH—

"But not good enough, my little crow."

Kaito awoke gasping for air, fighting off the blankets so he could sit up, and then curl around his knees and shake.

"Kuroba?"

Kaito couldn't answer, too focused on swallowing down nausea instead.

Not real. Not real, not real, NOT REAL. Wasn't me, wasn't even him, not properly...

The mattress dipped and squeaked, a pressure on Kaito's shoulder pulling him back out of his head into the moonlit darkness. He looked down, barely making out Saguru's hand gripping him, as Saguru continued, "Kuroba? Can you hear me?"

Kaito managed to nod, not trusting his voice right away when his breathing still was evening out.

"Was it a nightmare I should be concerned about the origin thereof, or that Lupin-san might have been mistaken?"

A convulsive laugh, thin and breathy and entirely without humor, escaped. "No."

"All right." After a thoughtful silence, Saguru asked, "Do you want to describe it, to get it out of your head? I expect it didn't involve me this time, as you're not checking my pulse."

"Brilliant, Holmes."

"Hardly that, but I'll accept your snark as a 'no'."

Kaito shook his head and leaned into Saguru's hand as its pressure lessened. Not talking meant letting Saguru go back to sleep, which would be the better thing for Saguru. But that left Kaito stuck with nothing but his thoughts in the dark until he could handle the thought of another nightmare or sheer exhaustion took over.

"Vermouth. All upper-hand and gloaty."

"That sounds… highly unpleasant."

"It was." Kaito hugged his knees tighter, trying to suppress the lingering fine tremors. "I miss when my worst nightmares were falling off the skyscraper and my grapple rig malfunctions."

"The skyscraper?" Saguru sounded appalled. "When the bloody hell was this?"

"...Snake shot me off a roof, about five months before you transferred? Winged me, got my glider. I had the plunger grapple attachment rig and caught myself fine—"

Kaito broke off as he listed sideways in the sudden absence of Saguru's hand, until an arm circled his shoulders not unlike when Saguru'd helped Kaito off the floor. It was weirdly protective, and Kaito might have protested if he'd cared more about his own pride as opposed to not thinking about Vermouth's triumphant face.

"The list of ways you have nearly died or been permanently injured as Kid is absurd," Saguru growled. "And I despise it."

"I'm not a fan either." Kaito shivered again, and the grip around his shoulders increased in response. "I got more careful, after that."

"That does not reassure me towards your level of care before that point, or the relative degree of danger between then and now." After a moment of silence Kaito wasn't sure how to fill, Saguru huffed, deliberately relaxing his hold but not shifting Kaito away. "Apologies. I'm biased at the moment. I was listening to you breathe before you woke. I'd dreamed of you being the one on the warehouse floor instead of Connery."

Kaito let his head drop against Saguru's shoulder, trying to not feel grateful that it wasn't only him. Even if Saguru's nightmares were apparently quieter. "...Worse before it gets better, right?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Saguru paused, thumb swiping against Kaito's bicep in contemplative, nervous energy. "After we make it home… would you object terribly to the thought of texting in the event of a particularly bad nightmare? On either of our parts."

"Sounds great. …Though depending on how bad things get, there's a non-zero chance I might panic-open a shadow rift to you instead of texting first." The energy expenditure might even make him too tired to nightmare a second time, after, but if Saguru was home and sleeping alone, he'd have his glasses off and shields down,, and panic couldn't be any more pleasant when imposed from the outside.

Saguru answered with an understanding hum. "Call instead, or beforehand, if you can think of it, but I won't hold it against you."

"Oh, good. Sorry in advance anyway."

They sat for another minute in silent, mutual reluctance to go back to sleep, until Kaito couldn't stand the lack of distraction from the memories crawling through his brain. "Not that I'm complaining right now, but you didn't used to be this tactile. I always figured it was culture norm till everything blew up in your face, but I'd have expected the opposite reaction with the whole… psychometry thing."

Saguru hummed again, thoughtfully. "Cultural norms would explain why it always felt as if you and Aoko-kun seemed to go out of your way to physically interact at school, particularly as my family is on the low end of the tactile norm even for England. …A circumstance that could be due to the type of person my grandmother is, or what I must have been like as a young child to have shaped my mum's habits."

"If it bugged you, you could've said." Kaito added 'Don't touch Hakuba unexpectedly' to the list of topics in the inevitable future conversation with Aoko.

Saguru shrugged, the motion tightening his arm around Kaito's shoulders again momentarily. "I have perhaps too much experience pushing through my own discomfort." He paused, then continued, "And I am familiar with the concept of touch-starvation, which Aidan alleviates in England but I had no replacement for in Japan."

"And now? I've forgotten here and there but I've been trying to not lately in case it'd catch you off guard or make it worse, but you still used to never initiate with either of us and that's… changed."

See evidence: I'm being hugged right now.

It was a nice hug, as hugs went.

"...There have been far too many moments where it seemed as though you might vanish into so much smoke," Saguru admitted. "Or be lost in your nightmares. I suppose the more times I've made the effort to ground you, the less of an effort it is."

"Oh." Saguru didn't seem interested in an apology, so… "Thanks. It's helped, including now." He'd finally stopped shivering.

"I'm relieved to hear it accomplished its purpose."

"Goes both ways, right? I'm not cold on a concrete floor, either… so you don't have to wait until I need grounding, if it'd help you." Kaito purposefully let himself relax against Saguru's taller frame, and was rewarded with Saguru shifting them to a more comfortable curl but where Kaito couldn't accidentally brush skin. "Especially when I'm gonna be more cautious about overloading you after we get home."

"I appreciate the consideration." Saguru's thumb swiped back and forth along Kaito's shirtsleeve again—definitely a nervous tic, or at least a sign of thinking and weighing his words. "I admit I have concerns about how Kurou-san's memories might affect your response to being startled from a dead sleep."

Kaito quietly hissed through his teeth, because it was a good point given where his nightmare had pulled from in the first place. "Throw a pillow at me first, or something. And I didn't just mean for nightmares this week."

"I see. I'll… keep that in mind."

"Good."

The silence was comfortable, this time. Rather than cut it off when Saguru didn't seem in any rush to go back to sleep either, Kaito let his mind wander to the plans for the afternoon, and how he was going to pull off restoring Axel into whoever Axel used to be.

Hopefully Axel would remember being Axel, or things might get awkward fast.

While they made it back to sleep eventually, Kaito kept twitching awake in anticipation of another nightmare. He gave up trying to doze when dawn filtered through the window curtains and snuck out to go for a run instead. Saguru didn't stir to Kaito's exit, so at least one of them was getting some decent rest in the end.

He got all the way to the front door before he remembered how badly the last time he'd left Saguru asleep without a note had gone, and winced.

Let's not do that again, one trauma-induced shouting match is enough for any friendship.

A borrowed pen and paper pad from the kitchen let him scribble a quick note to slip under the guest room door, which he signed with a grinning Kid doodle just because he could.

The neighborhood was quiet except for the calls of various shore birds, peaceful and undemanding. After at least a mile of trying to remember the last time there'd been so little to anticipate or plan for, he gave up and focused meditatively on the feel of the ground under his feet instead.

When he returned, pleasantly exhausted rather than riding the adrenaline buzz of interrupted sleep, the rest of the house was awake and the smell of breakfast wafted through the open windows. Riku greeted him from setting the table, then wrinkled his nose. "Breakfast is in fifteen, and I just heard the guest bathroom free up. Go get clean and I'll show you the laundry room after we eat."

"You're all heart, Riku." Kaito mussed Riku's hair in revenge as he passed, grinning at the younger teen's protest. Speeding through the morning routine brought him back downstairs just in time for the meal—blessedly not fish, as Riku admitted to having warned his mother about Kaito's phobia the night before, even if Kaito could manage to eat it when there weren't scales and fins and eyes involved.

Sora and Kairi arrived promptly after the requisite cleanup to study together.

As the trio set up their books and argued good-naturedly about where to start, Saguru pulled Kaito aside. "Is the makeup under your eyes solely to keep Yuushi and the rest from worrying, or did you plan to still try to reach Axel-san today in flagrant disregard to your own admission of needing a good night's sleep?"

"...I was going to ask what you thought about it after we had lunch, since I still prefer the idea of extra time for everyone to recover before Riku's parents see us."

"My thought is that you need more rest. Even if it should require waiting until the first day of their summer break, or later, we're not on a strict schedule. Pushing yourself now will merely lead to a longer recovery period until you're fit to be seen by Aoko-kun without frightening a year off her life."

"I'm not that bad, am I?"

Saguru wordlessly pulled out his phone and Kaito blinked at the sudden glare of the camera flash. He held the phone out and said, "Scroll left for the photos Aoko-kun took at the amusement park."

Kaito did. There were about a dozen, most of them candids of Kaito laughing at Riku or teasing Saguru, and one Riku had taken of the three of them together at Aoko's insistence. He swiped back to the new picture again, and grimaced. "I lost more weight than I thought."

"Not surprising, given everything, but depending on the timing of our return that difference will be much more stark. You truly didn't notice?"

Kaito debated a flippant answer for half a second, but he was still too damn tired (from last night? Last week? The last month?) and as much as he didn't want to increase Saguru's own stress, Saguru was the one asking. "Honestly? I'm not looking at mirrors more than the bare minimum ever since my nightmares started wearing my face, and Kurou-san looked even worse than this. My standards for comparison are skewed."

"Ah. And now that you have a proper standard?"

Kaito passed back the phone, raising his free hand in surrender. "I'll rest. Impossibilities can be later this week at the earliest, and in the meantime I'll try to get back toward my normal."

Saguru nodded, satisfied, and then thankfully Riku called them to start the study session and the subject could be dropped.

After a successful morning of work, Riku's parents were happy to let the five of them go to the island for the afternoon to run out their pent-up energy. The trio took it in stride when Kaito mentioned needing to postpone their original plans for Axel.

"You look about as tired as our first night at the Mutou's," Riku responded bluntly when Kaito brought up the lack of surprise. "Whatever you went through to get here wasn't easy, you said so. As long as Axel's handled before you leave, when doesn't matter."

"And while we got you some more elixirs, your magic is different enough it's probably healthier to let it recover naturally, even if it takes longer," Kairi said with a kind smile.

"That's right!" Sora agreed. "So even if you had to leave, you could always come back when you were ready. And we can still go to the island to hang out today!"

Riku enlisted Sora and Kairi to help him pack a picnic hamper for the whole group, and they took turns carrying it down to the docks. Sora and Kairi took the hamper into one boat and Riku beckoned Kaito and Saguru into his boat.

"Ready, Riku?" Sora asked, taking his oars as the unmoored boats drifted away from the dock.

The gleam in Riku's eye prompted Kaito to brace against Saguru and the wooden seat just in time. "Go!"

Their boat surged forward, heedless of Sora's good-natured complaints of Riku cheating as he fought to catch up. In the end they arrived at the tiny wooden dock almost neck and neck, and Kairi jumped out of the moving craft with the ease of practiced confidence to touch land first.

"Victory!" she crowed with arms raised, then laughed at Riku's face with Sora as Sora joined her on the dock and they hugged and hopped triumphantly on the creaking wood.

Riku groaned theatrically, storing the oars while Kaito and Saguru helped secure the boat against drifting. "Fine, you win, the score is 0-1-1 for today. I'll carry the food, now tie your boat before lunch drifts back home."

"Oops!" Sora caught the prow in time for Kairi to do so, and then clambered back in to retrieve the basket.

Riku made to take it by the shoulder strap, but when the weight transferred, abruptly dropped the entire thing with a hiss of pain, free hand pressing against his lower back. Sora and Kairi both reached for him immediately, all celebration forgotten.

"Riku!"

"Curaga!" Sora's keyblade shimmered into existence, and then a haze of green swirled for a few seconds around Riku. Sora ducked under Riku's lax arm, taking some of his weight without forcing him to change positions, while Kairi took the lunch instead from unresisting fingers.

"I'm okay," Riku managed through gritted teeth, his eyes closed. "Give me a minute."

"At the moment you're as convincing as Kuroba when he's about to fall over," Saguru pointed out dryly.

"Standing right here," Kaito reminded Saguru, as much to distract Riku as anything else.

"And you're not trying to convince me I'm wrong, either. Given the resistance to Sora-san's curative magic, is it muscle or nerve damage?"

"Mostly muscle, but both," Kairi said worriedly as Riku took another moment to breathe. "Xemnas hit him badly in the very last fight. We thought he was better, it hasn't been bothering him all this week…"

Kaito remembered a third rowboat floating innocuously at the dock. "Even if you all normally race, Hakuba and I tripled the weight of the boat compared to usual. Adrenaline must have masked the strain for the trip over."

Riku straightened gingerly, his arm still heavy on Sora's shoulders. "I guess so. I've been okay to run, I thought…" He shook his head. "I'll be careful the rest of today."

"This week," Kairi corrected with an air of authority. "And even though the ice cream is your turn today, Sora and I will split it for next week since we're voiding this week's score. Right, Sora?"

"This week and next, just to be safe." Sora looked up at Riku searchingly. "When you're ready, we'll move."

Riku deliberately smiled and used his free hand to ruffle Sora's hair. "Let's get in the shade already."

Riku declined a second human crutch, but Kaito walked close on his other side regardless, and Saguru offered to take the lunch basket from Kairi, who accepted with grace. As they walked up the beach, Kaito asked to fill the silence, "So the daily competition score is for ice cream and bragging rights?"

"Pretty much," Sora answered absently, attention still on Riku. "It can be over anything, from racing to homework grades. Since we got back and Kairi joined in too, the loser of the weekly total buys ice cream popsicles on Sundays."

"The store is down the street from the docks, so we get it to eat on the walk home," Kairi continued. "When it gets cold we'll switch to hot chocolate."

"Mmm, choco." Despite the afternoon heat, Kaito licked his lips at the thought.

"Take care, or Kuroba might come back to compete for the chocolate."

"I would not," Kaito protested. "...Probably."

At the treehouse, Kairi produced a motley pile of cushions to share, and Sora helped Riku find a comfortable position while the rest of them settled in a loose circle. Riku sighed. "So much for doing anything today."

"We can do games that don't involve running around," Kairi said, "And when Sora gets too antsy we'll go spar and Kaito-san and Saguru-san can keep you company, right?"

"I believe I'd prefer to join in that spar," Saguru said as he distributed the lunches. "We spent the past three days stuck indoors and I haven't been running myself ragged."

"I'm resting, I'm resting," Kaito protested with a rueful smile, then turned to Riku. "Do your parents know about your back?"

"Yeah. I have an excuse for PE until it stops flaring. I would have tried this week except it was finals, so we'll see when next semester starts."

"And if you're not feeling better by tonight, we'll tell your mom so she can take you to the doctor tomorrow," Sora added before diving into his food with enthusiasm.

"I can sit. I don't want to have to take finals after all this studying has had time to wear off."

"If you think you can sit in a chair for that long." Kaito drummed his fingers on the card case on his belt. "I'd offer to help, but… it'd only help with the muscles, and it looks like Sora had that handled with less taken out of him to do it."

Riku gently lobbed a small cushion at Kaito's face. "Even if you could help, you're banned from being a self-sacrificing idiot for the foreseeable future."

"I said I'm resting! Look at me not throwing energy at you at all. Maybe I'll even take a nap."

Though… not where one of you might hear a nightmare or get the bright idea of trying to wake me up out of it. Pre-dinner naps behind a closed door are better.

Kaito opted against mentioning the nightmares by focusing on eating, and once the food was gone, flicked a standard card deck from its spot up his sleeve into his palm. "In the interests of not being bored, I have other decks than my Duel one. Five's still a good number for Millionaire, and I owe Riku a rematch from last night."

"Why yes, yes you do." Riku's smirk was as smug as Kudou about to unravel a Kid heist.

Sora laughed. "Let's play!"

Sora and Kairi rowed on the way back from the island, and Riku was feeling well enough after an afternoon of rest to walk unassisted from the docks, even though his pace was slower than normal. Sora and Kairi hovered one to a side anyway, chatting distractingly about plans for summer vacation in between eating ice cream popsicles and greeting various passersby on the way to their neighborhood. Kaito started out walking behind Riku to join in the conversation, but then he glanced over his shoulder and saw Saguru lagging behind the rest of them by a few extra feet. He had his sunglasses off, and also had noticed Kaito's movement, raising his eyebrows as they made eye contact.

Kaito drifted backwards a step to be closer to converse, but not eliminate the distance completely. They hadn't talked about it much other than last night's conversation, admittedly because the times Saguru had been learning about his limits had typically been when Kaito's presence would have been unwelcome from a privacy and emotional health standpoint. And the in-between times had been too full of running or fighting for their lives and sanity.

Not thinking about that now.

He let go of the mental rabbit trails and focused on the same calm feeling that had worked well enough during the videotaping session. An ocean, Saguru had said; the mental image of pouring any stray emotion into that near-endless depth was one way to maintain equilibrium. "Would talking be a useful distraction or too much?"

Saguru allowed Kaito to stay in the bubble of personal space he'd created, which was a plus. "Easier without, but walk where you like."

"I'll let you concentrate, then." Kaito settled to keep pace with Saguru, since he did say 'anywhere', and enjoyed the silence and watching the younger trio interact. They were a good balance with each other, in-tune to even be finishing each other's sentences.

He and Aoko'd been like that, before Kid.

Maybe after she mopped him to death and Saguru helped him heist one of the most famous gems in the world, they could be like this too.

Since the exams started so soon, a second round of reviewing for the subjects of the first day got squeezed in after dinner, and then Sora and Kairi headed home.

Riku introduced Kaito and Saguru to a multiplayer video game that didn't seem to exist back in their world, but was similar enough that they could enjoy playing. Eventually Riku's mother shooed him to bed for an early night to be rested for the next day. She also reminded Kaito and Saguru that despite being young adults they also needed rest, but they were free to do as they liked during school hours for the week.

They looked at each other. Saguru raised an eyebrow. "Sleep?"

"Sleep," Kaito agreed reluctantly.

Kaito woke to wrenching his arm out of sudden pressure, turning with a snarl to deal with the unseen attacker.

Sitting, terrible leverage, somebody to the left, twist and -move- with stolen seconds to throw down and follow-up with bodyweight for proper leverage and an arm blocking breath from whoever dared—

"K'roba!"

Hands on his forearm, keeping the limb from fully creating a chokehold.

Bare hands.

Bare hands were important.

"Safe," Saguru's voice rasped, and the shadowy assailant of Kaito's sleep-addled mind dissolved. He reared back with a curse, but the grip on his arm didn't let go. "Wait—"

Saguru's expression was difficult to make out in the dark, but the desperate grip and strained tone made Kaito freeze.

"Isn't it—doesn't this hurt?" No, wait, bronze loop canceled psychometry unless the input was lots bigger, like a wave of Heartless.

Saguru grunted and finally let go as Kaito finished speaking. He pawed blindly along the headboard until there was a click of plastic-and-metal against wood.

"They've been off?" Kaito hissed, rolling away from Saguru's torso to his side of the bed as the glasses were settled back in place. The older teen didn't respond beyond several long moments of ragged breathing, which was answer enough.

His fingers dug so deeply into his palms he would still feel it in the morning proper, but Kaito waited out Saguru's silence while he recovered rather than bombard him with questions.

Yet.

"Sorry," Saguru managed eventually, in English. "Didn't mean t'wake you up. Forgot the pillow."

"Pillow?" Kaito repeated, and then it clicked. "Oh. Yeah, we just proved empirically that throwing one at me is clearly the better option as a wake up call." He'd deal with the horror that deserved later. "But what the hell, Hakuba. Why'd you hang on?"

Saguru shuddered, visible even in the dim light. "Wasn't thinking, just… was better than the other."

"...What."

Another slow, careful breath. "Dreamed of the Heartless. When I woke up, that… feeling… was still in my head."

Kaito cursed viciously. "Has this happened before?"

"Once, the last time I dreamed of them. They're all the same Void, so many—" Saguru broke off and rolled to his side facing Kaito, as if the movement could create distance from the memory. Kaito caught himself reaching instinctively, but when Saguru didn't move away, slowly lowered his hand to grip the blond's shoulder through his nightshirt.

Saguru relaxed a little and went on, "Too much. Goes straight through memory to flashback."

"So it was overloading you already, and grabbing me switched the contents of the overload."

"Mm. Loud, but at least not that."

"I can imagine." The overwhelm part, at least. The exact contents, Kaito was desperately glad that he couldn't imagine what the Heartless felt like.

"Mm," Saguru agreed again, sounding exhausted. "Least you're human."

Because of THAT.

Kaito squeezed Saguru's shoulder again. "Pure human, though Aoko might argue I've got kitsune in my family tree somewhere."

"Oh?"

"You've seen my propensity for troublemaking, haven't you?"

A faint snort. "Chaos gremlin, more like."

Kaito snickered. "Maybe. Most rules are arbitrary and deserve to be bent or ignored."

"Most rules exist for a reason, but should be considered in context," Saguru countered, tone light enough that the conversation was doing its job as a distraction rather than an actual argument.

"I do consider context. Usually the context is 'this rule is arbitrary and should be ignored'."

"Definitely a chaos gremlin."

Kaito grinned at Saguru's faint smile. "Doing a little better now?"

"My head's quieter. Apologies for waking you."

"Not your fault. Sorry for—attacking you."

"Indisputably not your fault. The more distance from Kurou-san's memories you have, the more those instincts should fade."

"Here's hoping. And that you don't have a nightmare like this again."

"Never would be too soon." Saguru sighed. "I'll be all right, now. You should go back to sleep."

"You sure?" Kaito yawned, but he could do stubborn wakefulness if Saguru was still unsettled.

"Yes. One of us should be. Go back to bed."

"Already here~"

Saguru chuckled roughly, which Kaito took as the hard-won victory it deserved. "Semantics. Go back to sleep, Kuroba."

Kaito curled back under the blankets.

Just as well we postponed Axel to the end of the week. Is one good night's sleep too much to ask for?

Endnote: Three guesses if Saguru is doing as well as he claims to Kaito, and the first two don't count.